Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of UK Essays.

Our Country India is a country, which got independence almost 55 years back in 1947, & in 1992 we achieved L.P.G. - Liberalization, privatization & Globalization. Then India started growing in various sectors gradually focusing on opportunities but neglecting the existing problems which other wise would have helped India be the leader.

Theemployment rate in India increased with the increase in opportunities like education, globalization, talent & other opportunities. But these not only helped us in employment, benefits to our economy & improved standard of leaving but also brought along competition to optimize existing capabilities and increase efficiency, which demands a lot more out of the people than what they were handling few years back.

The first chapter deals with the literature review of what scholars had to say about possible HR policies to manage people in an organization, and the bigger picture of the relevance of HR policies with respect to Work Life Balance in organizations. The 2nd chapter describes the Quintiles India, its HR practices & the survey results about the company. The Chapter 3 describes the HR practices followed by other companies and its impact. The 4th chapter deals with a comparative analysis of these organizations on certain parameters and finally concludes with recommendation for Quintiles to improve on few neglected areas

Our research methodology comprises of literature review, telephonic interview with the Senior HR manager of Quintiles and questionnaire based survey with employees of Quintiles to understand the reason behind their balanced work life. We also sent the similar questionnaire which was a generalized copy of the survey to understand the Work-life balance of employees in different professions like educational, IT/Software, Service sector, Medicine, Entertainment, public sector & government employees. We tried to get at least one sample from each of these categories, with a total of more than 70 samples outside Quintiles & a sample of 40 we came up with few observations in our report.

Literature Review

In 1977, Kanter proposed the view of work and family in the business world as that of two separate domains. With the changing nature of people, work and workplaces, people have started focusing on job insecurity, work load, quality work and long working hours (Brannen and Moss 1998; Burchell, Ladipo et al. 2002; La Valle, Arthur et al. 2002) and the long hours culture in many occupations (Bond, Hyman et al. 2002; Crompton, Dennett et al. 2003). Although occupational and work-family stress has been addressed since the 1980s, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in stress, relating to these changes in the nature of work (Brannen and Moss 1998; Burchell, Ladipo et al. 2002; La Valle, Arthur et al. 2002; Yeandle, Wigfield et al. 2002). Lack of training coupled with poor policy awareness leads to inconsistencies in application both between and within departments. The tension between being responsive in individual cases and being seen to treat requests equally can cause problems for managers (Kodz et al. 2002; Bond et al. 2002). If an employee feels that their work-life policy request has not been dealt with fairly there is a tendency to compare their treatment unfavorably with that of other employees. Despite all these some authors noticed that the relationship between work life benefit programs and employee behavior and attitudes remains unclear and thus have called for more research on the impact of work life balance benefits in work place.(Casper & Buffardi, 2004; Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux & Brinley, 2005; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998; 1999).

Source:

(Wiley Inter Science, Journal of Organizational Behavior "Work-Life benefits and positive organizational behavior: is there a connection?" & "Work-life Balance: A New Challenge for Shining India" an article in Eighth AIMS International Conference on Management by Archna Sukhija, Forte Institute of Technology, Meerut)

Chapter 1

Introduction

Our project is an attempt to understand how Indian working force balance their work & life. The success of an organization depends on its people to a large extent- their commitment, dedication, expertise, creativity and quality of work which will actually be reflected on customer satisfaction. People management plays an important role in this and thus HR Manager has high responsibility in success or failure of an organization. In today's competitive world, the demand for workforce that is stable, committed, adaptable and flexible to meet the business challenges ahead is high. At the same time because of growing employment rate, where in both men and women have started working has left no time for family life, raising kids or taking care of their parents. Lately employees have realized the value of family and so are placing more value on 'quality of working life' seeking greater flexibility so that they can manage work commitments alongside personal and family life. Which is a good sign from the personal life aspect but can organizations still work effectively with these demands from employees?

We have chosen Quintiles India, because this company is well known for its work life balance, and is listed in the "Top 50 - Best company to work for in India " top among the companies in the clinical/health sector.

Chapter 2

Quintiles India

QuintilesIndia operates among the rapidly growing pharmaceutical market. It is a CRO - clinical research organization. The company helps clients make use of a well-established corporate infrastructure, government policies favoring R&D,growth in the health insurance sector; hospitals available for clinical trials and tertiary care. Added to the above advantages, Quintiles India has a solid relationship with leading medical centers and experienced English-speaking investigators. All studies are conducted to FDA and ICH GCP (good clinical practices) standards. India's highly literate population provides fast, efficient access to broad population groups with common and special disease profiles, allowing for rapid patient recruitment and faster study start-ups. The key services include access to patients, biostatistics, central laboratory services, clinical monitoring and site management, data management, drug safety/pharmacovigilance, ECG services, project management and regulatory services. Quintiles India is located in four major cities: Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Gurgaon and recently Hyderabad. And they have the Gender Ratio (F: M):1:0.73.

Quintiles, is the only fully integrated bio and pharmaceutical services provider offering clinical, commercial, consulting & capital solution. We have chosen Quintiles India, based in Bangalore, which handles data management facility. Quintiles India because this company is well known for its work life balance, and is listed in the "Top 50 - Best company to work for in India " top among the companies in the clinical/health sector. In India, Quintiles works with 15 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. It has conducted 90 trials involving 13,000 patients and in cardiovascular areas, cancer, diabetes, psychiatric and infectious diseases.

HR practice in Quintiles India

The company's personal approach and flexibility have won it its employees' admiration and loyalty. Employees at Quintiles are encouraged to look beyond customary practices, share suggestions and ideas on processes or post new ideas using online tools like Eureka and IPAC. They have Business Innovative Center at the company, which reviews and formulates an action plan.â€¨Work-life balance is an area of focus for Quintiles across the world.

Quintiles India policies involve:

Flexible Management Practices across, including work from home for certain levels

Home based employment where the company provides the required work-enabling basic office infrastructure

Choice of shift timings for those working in shifts, etc.

Four Months Maternity leave, as against 3 months per the rules

Five days Special Leave apart from other Privilege leaves, casual & sick leaves- Paid leaves for employees to spend time with their families

Transfer options to different locations or different countries

Few Practices to maintain employee friendly atmosphere:

Celebrations at Quintiles allow people to bond and enjoy their togetherness.

Major festivals like Christmas and Diwali are celebrated.

Individual Business units have a committee based on a theme of recreation or another action such as sports, picnic, social responsibility events, which also prepares a calendar based on fun activities.

An annual Parichay, Open Day, PVC Family Day, EADare the family day, achievements award day and annual day for celebrated in the office.

Friday quizzes, food mela, ethnic days and other activities are organized to help people exchange their home cooked foods and understand each other culture, customs & tradition

The location,working hours, timings, shifts of employees in Quintiles

Work hours - 8.5 hrs of work per day.

Office timings: The core office hours are 10.30am to 5pm. The timings are flexible for general shift employees

Shifts: They have 2 shifts operations; 24X7 & general shift options available based on the business there are in. This largely depends on the type of business line & the contract they have signed with the clients.

Innovative working methods to encourage the employees

Quintiles India have dedicated website for career ladders where employees can view the next steps in the same business line & in various other business lines. This site also has the job descriptions of every job available in Quintiles across the globe. They collaborate through an online document management tool that acts as a document library, issue tracker and surveys or quizzes. Manager Direct Access allows managers to access and update HR data on their reports.

An employee sums up the experience of working with Quintiles in these words: "First of all, I would like to say that this is the best place that I have worked for. People are so good and friendly that you feel like a family. You don't have to hesitate even for a second to reach somebody, even a senior manager in the company. We celebrate almost every occasion that comes our way as a team, while involving various departments. There is personal satisfaction and pride in the job that I do for my organization."

Chapter 3

Work life Balance policies in other Companies

In this section we will be discussing the work life balance policies in other organizations. We have considered KPMG & PWC are two other organizations which didn't have good HR policies in place but they are trying to improve it. So, as per our methodology, we will first give a glimpse of KPMG and PWC's HR policy reviews. In the next chapter we will compare between various organizations.

KPMG's HR Policies

KPMG is a place where HR policies were not really good, but they are addressing the key challenges and are trying to rectify it.

KPMG recognised the importance of balance in the relationship between work and non-work life, and the potentially significant impact that this can have on team performance.

Today staffs expect more flexibility in job, recognition, cooperation and freedom in job. So main challenge was to develop a flexible work life, giving them enough freedom & recognition.

They implemented the flexible working hours for employees, all employees are eligible to apply for flexible working and have the right to appeal if their request is declined.

Line manager and HR personnel work together to achieve goals.

After the successful implementation of different policies, the key performance indicators have improved. It has made staff more loyal & motivated.

It has reduced recruitment cost and staff retention has been increased.

KPMG recognises the benefits of having a diverse workforce and sees this as strategic gains.

Following are the various HR practices that have been implemented in KPMG. Supports the firm in matching workforce deployment with fluctuating business demand and thereby improves overall performance and efficiency.

Glide Time -this is about working core hours (10.00 am to 4.00 pm). Working hours starts between 8.00 and 10.00 am and finishes between 4.00 and 6.00 pm. So the normal lunch time is also available.

Part-time working

Additional Holiday Purchase - extra days can be brought as holidays

Unpaid Leave - three months of unpaid leave may be taken if entire outstanding holiday break has been used

Career break - there is an opportunity to take a break in between work life after at least serving two years in the organization

Home working

(Source: KPMG HR policies)

PwC's HR Policies

Coming to PWC's HR policies, this is another example of improving the existing policies. The key challenges here were- this is a Professional services firm, as highly client-centric organisations, it tends to be characterised by a long hours, extremely undisciplined work culture.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has therefore been leading the drive to flex and adapt corporate structures to respond to the increasing demand - from the business and from our people - for flexibility and work-life integration.

Principles:

As employees are all different, PWC started recognising the diversity in workforce. In fact the meaning of work-life balance varies according to peoples' perspective.

Individuals must take responsibility for their own work-life balance and be considerate of others' needs.

They seek to achieve the optimum balance between business and employees'needs.

Working hour flexibility is another important proposition that has beenintroduced in the organization.

Quality of output is more important than the number of hours worked- so,quality of the output should be judged.

Policies the entire employee can apply for:

Flexible benefits

Flexible working patterns

Career breaks

Flexible leave arrangements

Employee Assistance Programme

Compassionate and emergency leave

Lifestyle management support and training

Discounts/concierge services

Policies for parents:

Extended maternity leave

Fully paid paternity leave

Adoption leave

Parental leave

Time off for dependants

Childcare vouchers

As a result of all these,

Employee satisfaction has been increased

Staff retention has also been improved

Due to various maternity benefits, joining after a maternity leave has also been increased

Attitude of the employee has been changed, as well as the management has become more empathetic towards the workforce. The trust factor has also been improved.

(Source: PwC HR Policies)

Chapter 4

A comparative study of Quintiles & other companies

HR Policies

PWC

KPMG

Quintiles

Flexible working patterns

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Work from Home

ƒ¼

Choice of Shift Timing

ƒ¼

Extended Maternity Leave

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Inter-countries/ Intra-countries Transfer options

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Lesser working hours (8.5 hours)

ƒ¼

Part-time working

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Job sharing

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Additional holiday purchase

ƒ¼

Career Break

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Lifestyle management support and training

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Compassionate and emergency leave

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Flexible leave arrangements

ƒ¼

ƒ¼

Online Availability of intra-organization career growth opportunities

ƒ¼

Employee Assistance Programme

ƒ¼

The above table clearly shows the comparatison of HR policies in the respective companies.The survey results are based on a survey(Refer to the Appendix: Survey questionnaire). We had prepared a questionnaiare which was used to gauge the Work life balance Condition among Indian Employees in general and a questionaire online survey specific to Quintiles employee. Out of the response we got we found the result as below:

Analysis of the survey (overall).

The age group from 21-26 of IT employees were the people with less stress and better life. Inspite of not very balanced diet. Some were disappointed of the fact that there is nothing challenging on their work place to look for. And it is too much of life and no work(especially TCS employee's with experience of <1yr to 3 years). The People working in Education sector proved to be good at balancing work life balance having good time with family & achievements in work place. Few were complaining about minor work related health problems like hyper tension.The set of people who showed dissatisfaction about their present organisation and work life balance were mostly people working in Consultant roles. Complaining about little time with family, Obesity and heavy work load.The above analysis was based on sector wise. People who did not mix family and work hours or thinking about work at home viceversa looked more

Features

Responses - Quintile

Responses-General

Satisfaction about the time you spent with your family

75 % Yes

60 % yes

Worrying about work (when they are not at work or traveling to or from work)

24% say more than 2-3 hours per day

55 % say more than 2-3 hours per day

Missing out on any quality time with family/friends because of pressure of work

28 % Likely

59 % Likely

Feel tired or depressed because of work?

20% sometimes

36 % sometimes

Aware of policy that stresses on work life balance

76% yes

26 % yes,

49 % maybe, I am not aware of

People who suffer from stress-related health problems

19 % yes

35 % yes

Rating of their organization, based on work life balance

78 /100( rating on scale)

56/100 (rating on scale)

Involvement in quality work & positive result in workplace

53 %,

30 %,

Enthusiasm to work and achieve

41 %, Daily

25 %, Dailysatisfied.

Special observation from Quintiles survey:

Out of 80% of the people, are satisfied with Quintiles after changing their jobs from previous company . For reasons like:

Work Shedule, Career growth opportunities, Salary, Work Life Balance, Job satisfaction, Working hours, Challenging work , flexibilty etc

The overall survey response showed that the secret behind good work life balance & professional success was:

Good HR Policies, practices & work culture in their companies.

Good eating habits & diet

Good time for self, family & kids

Physical exercise & recreation

Kind of organization, job profile & location

And mainly Time management

Recommendations to Quintiles for better performance to achieve close to 100% employee satisfcation:

Annexure

Survey questionnaire:

1 Age

< 20

21 to 25

26 to 32

33 to 38

39 to 45

46 to 52

> 52

2 Gender

Male

Female

3 Marital Status

Single

Married

Engaged (soon to be married)

Divorced

3a If married, is your spouse employed too?

Yes

No

4 Designation in your organization

4a When was the last time you felt good about your job, project completion or any work related achievements?

Last week

Last month

Few months ago

Last year

Few years ago

Not yet

4b How often do you think about making a difference in your organization, by supporting the organization to achieve its objective and goals?

Never

Once in a year, when I see other getting achievement awards

Less than Once a Month

Once a Month

2-3 Times a Month

Once a Week

2-3 Times a Week

Daily

4c How do you grade your response with respect to below? (LEAST TO BEST); eg: i am not friendly - least, I am very patient - best)

______ Relation ship with peers (friendly)

______ While peers or clients are asking doubts about some issue with work (Patience)

______ Building rapport easily

______ Would love to hangout with peers during non working hours

______ Might end up being best friends with peers (probabilty)

______ How is your relation ship with your boss?

5 Do you stay with your family?

Yes

No

5a How often do you spend time with your parents, wife or kids in following ways? (Choose one option of time under each category, if applicable)

At home/ watching TV

At home helping wife & parents with house work

With kids helping with their home work/projects/ teaching/playing

Go out for movies/shopping/ fantasy parks/ parties

< 1 hour

2 to 4 hours

4 to 6 hours

> 6 hours

Answer If Do you stay with your family? Yes Is Selected

Q12 Are you satisfied about the time you spend with family?

ƒ° Yes ƒ° No

6 Kind of organization

Education

IT/Software

Clinical/Pharmaceutical

Management

MEDICAL

Manufacturing/Production

Government/Public sector

Fieldwork/ Work involving travel ling (Sales, people interaction..)

Entertainment

Service, Consulting, Research (white collar jobs)

Security services (Army, police department,..)

Others

7 How many days in a week do you normally work?

< 4

5

6

7

Varies based on projects in hand ( 0 to 7)

8 Do you spend more than an hour traveling to your workplace?

Yes

No

9 How often do you worry about work (when you are not at work or traveling to or from work)?

Never

More than 2- 3hrs everyday

Everyday once in before sleeping/ soon after I wake up

once in a week

twice or thrice month

once in a month

10 Do you ever miss out on any quality time with family or your friends because of pressure of work?

Very Unlikely

Unlikely

Likely

Very Likely

11 Your work hours fall in the category of

<8 hours

8 to 10 hrs

>11 hours

Day shift

Night shift

Flexible timings

Late afternoon - late night

12 Which of the following do you think will hinder you in balancing your work and family commitments?

Long working hours

Compulsory overtime

Shift work

Meetings/training after office hours

Others

13 Do you feel tired or depressed because of work?

Never

Rarely

Sometimes

Often

Always

14 Does your normal day, routine consist of any of the following?

Yoga

Meditation

Dance

Walk

Music

Entertainment

Sports

Other recreational activities

none

15 Does your company have policy that stresses on work life balance?

Yes

May be, I am Not aware

No

16 If yes, what are the provisions?

Flexible working hours

Holidays/ paid time off

Job sharing

Career break sabbaticals

Relaxed Maternity leaves & benefits

Paternity leaves

Work from home

Transfer options to other location with similar work, as per request

None

17 Does your organization provide you with following additional work provisions?

Telephone for personal use

Counseling service for employee

Social networking sites, to interact with friends

Health programs

Transportation

Parenting or family support programs

Exercise facilities( GYM, YOGA, MEDICATION CENTER)

Others

none

17a How often do you make use of it?

Very Often, I am fitness conscious

Once in while. when friends call

May be will use in near future

No time , but if I find time will definitely go regularly

No time , always loaded with work

Never been there before may be I should try it some time

Never

18 Does your organization encourage the involvement of your family members in work- achievement reward functions?

Yes

No

18 Do you suffer from any stress-related health issue?

Yes

No

19 If yes...

hypertensionâ€¨.

obesity

diabetes

frequent headaches

Others

22 Do you Smoke or Drink

Never

Yes , occasionally

Yes, More than once per day

Yes, I am addicted

Yes, trying to quit

Just smoke

Just drink

23 Do you think that if employees have good work-life balance the organization will be more effective and successful?

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Neither Agree nor Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

24 How long have you been working in the current organization?

right from the day I joined

< 1 year

1 to 3 years

3 âˆ’ 6 years

> 6 years

25a If you have changed your job, previously at least once what was the reason?

24b Were you satisfied with new work place, with respect to the reasons for which you changed to your new employer?

Yes

No

25 How much would you rate your organization, in terms of the following?

______ Work-life balance

______ Career Growth opportunity

______ Friendly environment

______ Traveling on Job opportunity

______ Salary for the amount of work I do

______ When Compared to my previous organization/ similar organization in terms of all the above

26 I love my current Organization!

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Neither Agree nor Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

28 Your concerns about this survey, any suggestions for improvement in succeeding Work-life balance!!

Q29 Were you aware that Quintiles is one of the TOP50 companies in India "to work for".

Yes

No

Q30 Any thing that you think makes your organization the best place to work? (Eg: work life balance, employee engagement programâ€¦)

1) Governing body of Quintiles?

2) HR Policies?

We have policies on the following to help employees achieve work life balance

1. Work from home

2. Home- based

3. 4 Months Maternity leaves as against 3 months per the market

4. 5 days Special Leave apart from other Privilege leaves, casual &sick leaves- Paid leaves for employees to spend time with their families

5. Transfer options to different locations or different countries

6. Flexible timings

Some of the above are for certain lines of business

3) Different career opportunities?

We have a dedicated website for career ladders where employees can view the next steps in the same business line & in various other business lines. This site also has the job descriptions of every job available in Q across the globe.

4) What are the factors that matters while deciding

a) Workinghours, timings & shifts of employees

Work hours - Q follows 8.5 hrs of work per day.

Office timings: The core office hrs is 10.30am to 5pm. The timings are flexible for general shift employees

Shifts: we have 2 shifts operations; 24X7& general shift options available based on the business there are in. This largely depends on the type of business line & the contract we have signed with eh clients.

5) Different locations of Quintiles and which region has which functions:

I have given details of business lines in India only. There are many other across the globe.

Clinical Operations - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore &Ahmadabad

Corporate Support - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmadabad& Delhi

Data Management, Biostatistics - Bangalore

Laboratory - Bangalore & Mumbai

Regulatory and Drug Safety - Regulatory is inAhmadabad& Drug safety is in Bangalore

Biostatistics - Bangalore

Med writing - Bangalore & Mumbai

Phase 1 - Hyd

6) What is your response to survey results?

With this information you might notice some trends, which are team, specifies EG. Some teams are stressed & some are ok with WLB. Some teams working in shifts are faring better in WLB than general shift.. etc.. May be dept to dept, we can observe trends.. Pharmacovigilance is more stressed. Data management is less stressed.

Interview with employee:

Describes his job & says, "I would like to refer my friends who are working in the same line to join Quintiles "

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